Every so often a major brand will do something which makes me check the calendar to see if the date is April 1st. Yesterday was one of those days when I came across the latest Kit Kat (owned by Nestle) campaign to re-brand their iconic product to celebrate the 80th anniversary.

Re-branding, that is by changing the name of the product on the outer wrapper to a number of different "break" type situations including "You Tube Break".

That's correct. Let's celebrate our 80th anniversary by removing iconic elements and diluting / prostituting the brand 600,000 times. Nestle have some form here, previously they re-branded to coincide with the new "Kit Kat" version of Android (Android always name their software after confectionery) in a commercial deal and it seems the partnership continues.

I understand what Google get out of these stunts I just don't see the value for Nestle. It seems a forced and labored campaign in stark contrast to the freshness of Coca Cola and their 'personalized' bottles. One cannot but help wonder if this is a deliberate effort to emulate.

In this video the brand teams talk about the "momentous campaign" .

Will this result in increased brand awareness, possibly. After all it worked with me - I'm writing about it and you are, hopefully reading this. But I doubt it will result in an increase in sales. This is what I call 'busy work' for marketers. It makes them feel good about themselves but does precious little for the brand or the commercial performance.

They would have been better served by going retro with their packaging - back to Year 1 and celebrate with a story which is about them not a desperate effort to appear relevant.

As I have said before marketers should ask "Why ?" a lot more than stating "Why not ?".